Self-Employment Intentions Among Ukrainian Students

The study tests three models (theory of planned behaviour (TPB), Shapiro-Sokol model of entrepreneurial event (SEE) and the integrated model) of entrepreneurial intentions with regard to a sample of Ukrainian business students. This study provides fresh insights into entrepreneurial intentions and the intentions of students in an emerging free market economy. The following research question is explored: Which subjective norms and perceived behavior are linked to the intention to become self-employed? In 2007, a structured questionnaire was administered to third, fourth, and fifth-year students following business administration courses in three universities in the Ukraine. Profile and entrepreneurial intention information was consistently gathered from 192 students. The mean age of respondents is 20.2 (standard deviation is 1.8), and 71 per cent of respondents were females. The TPB model was a better predictor of student self-employments intention than the SEE model. The combined TPB-SEE model reported superior predictive power explaining self-employment intention than the individual TPB and SEE models. Students with a positive attitude toward entrepreneurship are more likely to report a self-employment intention. Further, students perceiving an environment that supports entrepreneurship and those reporting a perceived behavior control were more likely to report the intention to become self-employed. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that desirability mediated the link between attitude and self-employment intention in the combined TPB-SEE model. With regard to the latter model, the positive links between perceived behavior control and subjective norm with self-employment intention were mediated by feasibility.